


These Things Take Time

by yutaya



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 16:49:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yutaya/pseuds/yutaya
Summary: Danny and Ward's adventures across Asia include learning new skills, nightmares, heart-to-hearts, and hugging. Lots of hugging.





	These Things Take Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



> Thanks to the Iron Fist discord, where there was a conversation awhile back about Ward and Danny bonding over nightmares (and Danny subsequently finding out how badly the abuse affected Ward), and to Sholio, who prompted me to write it.
> 
> Thanks also to my brother, who, despite never having watched a minute of any Defenders show, kindly proofread the first third or so of this, highlighted all my run-on sentences (which is to say, every paragraph) and told me to fix that, as well as to give my dialogue more context. He's the reason you're not having to deal with parentheses, em dashes, and commas all in the same sentence.
> 
> (He also said this is more overwhelmingly sappy than the kind of fics he used to read as a teenager in high school, but I didn't change any of that. \o/)

It starts out like a normal business trip - or so Danny imagines, he doesn't have a lot of reference. On the first day, Ward has to buy some clothes and stuff; he hadn't exactly been packed for a travelling research mission when he'd planted himself in front of Danny's jet out like he could hold them to the ground with pure stubbornness. (To be fair, no one was going to try to take off with a person running around on the tarmac, so he was kind of right.) Afterwards, they check into a hotel for the night - two rooms, which Danny thinks is kind of unnecessary, but Ward acts like it’s standard procedure so Danny shrugs it off.

They continue in that vein for awhile: retracing the sale process on that shipping container, following any names that pop up, going through old myths and historical accounts for anything that could have actually been related to the Iron Fist, and visiting and interviewing any professors with a possibly related specialty. There are also side trips to take in the sights; they start up a custom of grabbing a travelling brochure every time they go somewhere new and hitting most of the tourist attractions.

Ward does a lot of looking over and emailing stuff to Rand during downtime, and sometimes conferencing in once it hits morning in New York. Somewhere in the first few days Danny, feeling kind of guilty, asks what they’re currently working on. After that, Ward starts talking him through whatever he happens to be doing as an improvised business lesson.

"You're really good at this," Danny comments after watching Ward breeze through a batch of proposals.

"Well, I _have_ had a little bit of practice."

"Just a little,” Danny jokes, abandoning the screen to lean back and watch Ward work. “Guess there's an advantage to growing up in the office, huh?"

"Well, that might have been you too, if..."

 _If my dad hadn't killed your parents, and tried to kill you with them_ , hangs in the air between them. Danny, trying to regain the light atmosphere, continues:

"No, seriously, I looked us up and all the articles say you're a visionary; you've made all these great decisions that no one else would have predicted-"

"That wasn't me," Ward snaps. Danny falls silent, stunned by the abrupt mood shift, as Ward gathers his laptop and retreats to his room for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

 

Over time, their luggage gets more portable, their wardrobes more practical, and they stop bothering with two rooms at the hotels. They’re getting closer to figuring out where the Iron Fist corpse came from. They even find a name to follow! _Orson Randall_. (Danny remarks that his name sounds evil; Ward counters that names don't sound evil; it devolves into a competition to see who can name the most people that aren't evil but who have evil-sounding names.)

A chase through the river market in Palembang with _actual pirates_ has Danny convincing Ward to let him teach him some basic self-defense, and drilling moves gets added to their typical daily activities. Ward has a laser focus when it comes to their little 'lessons'. This is a relief because Danny still remembers Colleen's scathing fury when he punished her students' wandering minds the way the monks had him, but he'd seen so few of her classes in comparison to the monastery that it's hard for him to always know the right thing to do.

Ward taking so well to the self-defense lessons helps ease something that had clenched in Danny's chest nearly two years prior, with a cut off sentence and sickening thunk on the other end of a phone. He does notice, however, that sometimes Ward will get oddly withdrawn, massaging a sore muscle or staring at the spot on the carpet where he'd repeatedly flipped Danny earlier.

-

Ward usually starts the night either on his back or on his side, facing away from Danny. No matter what they'd been doing that day, he always seems to still be awake when Danny falls asleep, if very still and silent about it.

Danny tends to wake up earlier, which is typical for him back home too. In K'un Lun, they were expected on the training field before sunrise, and Davos used to tease Danny for trailing near the rear of the pack, still half-asleep, but in New York, even when he sleeps in, Danny is considered an early riser. He likes the solitude of the early morning, running through his forms and recharging his chi as the world grows brighter alongside it. Back in their apartment, Colleen would often emerge while he was still moving, but he had especially loved the mornings when he’d finished up before she rose, because it meant that he got to make breakfast for her.

The start of their self-defense sessions heralds an increase in mornings where Danny wakes to find Ward already typing away at his laptop, or curled up with his sketchbook - or, conversely, where Ward sleeps later than usual, like he's more exhausted than Danny would have figured.

Usually when Danny jolts up from an unsettling dream or some such, he can just roll over and go back to sleep. Somewhere around 3 or 4 am one night, he gets up to visit the bathroom instead, and when he creeps out, he notices that Ward is still lying on his back. This is vaguely surprising; despite Ward's rigidity as he lies awake at night, Danny thinks he must move around a fair amount in his sleep, because he's always either turned over to his other side or onto his stomach or sometimes burrowed far under the covers by morning. But there he is, looking somehow even more still than he'd been when Danny fell asleep, practically not even breathing, and - _his eyes are open_.

Danny freezes. He'd been trying to be as slow and silent as possible, but... come to think of it, had he been _too_ slow? He can remember an instructor telling the group, once, that if you're going to cause movement, better it be briefly, so they'll quickly forget, rather than continually drawing attention away from what you want them focused on. Should he return to bed quickly? He probably looks creepy, standing here in the dark. Then again, Ward might go back to sleep soon, like Danny usually does, so maybe he should maintain the quiet until then?

As Danny watches, Ward slowly turns his head away, to the far nightstand where a clock glows back at them. A few more moments, and Ward's arms inch out from under the covers to fold them down. He lifts his head off the pillow a few times, like he’s overheated, then slowly turns his head in the other direction... and stills when he sees Danny's empty bed. Shit.

"Sorry, did I wake you?" Danny whispers, climbing back into bed and pretending hard that he hadn't just been standing there in the dark like some kind of specter.

"...No, you're good," Ward croaks after a few motionless seconds, then rolls over into his usual back-to-Danny preparing for sleep position.

Danny takes a little while to fall back asleep after that. He feels oddly unsettled by the whole exchange. When he finally drifts off again, Ward's back still looks just as tense and aware as before.

 

* * *

 

 

They’re holed up in Bali to strategize their upcoming approach on the warehouse in Jakarta - it’s only an hour's flight away, and past experience has taught them to get in and get out of a town or city where things might go sideways. It's a smaller room than usual - one queen bed instead of twins. When they checked in, the receptionist called them a very handsome couple, which Danny gleefully translated for Ward the moment they were out of sight just to relish the look on his face.

Ward is stiff as usual when they go to bed that night. Danny thinks nothing of it. After seeing Ward wake up that one night, he's taken to glancing over to check on him whenever he wakes. He’s noticed a few more incidents of Ward seeming to snap awake but remain very still, unlike Danny, who tends to jolt around when he wakes abruptly before relaxing back into bed.

That night, Danny partially wakes. He isn't sure why, since he doesn't remember any dreams and he’s still mostly asleep instead of his standard springing to hyper-awareness for a split second. Probably some minute environmental change; intensive warrior training can be a nuisance sometimes. Eyes still closed, he wiggles closer to the warmth a foot or so away, then buries his face in the shoulder and slings his arm over the chest of the tense body he finds there.

A moment later, Ward snaps awake. Instead of remaining frozen in the clenched state his body had started to work itself into minutes before he woke up, like usual, this time he jerks violently away from the foreign weight _strapped across his chest_ , _holding him down_ , rolls onto the floor so the side of the bed becomes a makeshift barrier, and _throws the clock from the bedside table_ at the offending intruder on the way down.

Danny gasps back up at the sudden commotion, flailing around to try and locate the threat with his heart pounding but his eyes still bleary for a few terrifying seconds before he calms down enough to realize what happened.

"...Ward?"

"...Sorry about that," Ward says, sliding back into the bed. Deliberately nonchalant, he plucks the clock from the mattress next to Danny's arm and places it back on the table, then flips his pillow over and lies back down, arms exposed over the covers. He doesn't look at Danny, but he obviously carefully doesn’t look away, either.

"...Some really quick reflexes you've got, there," Danny says lightly, lying back down himself. "I'm impressed." Ward's shoulders relax a fraction.

"You've only got yourself to blame for my reaction time, Kung Fu Kid."

"...Do you wanna talk about it?"

Silence. Just when Danny starts to think that they definitely aren't going to talk about it, Ward speaks.

"Did you know that one of the symptoms of heroin addiction is hallucinations? Also for benzo withdrawal. And alcohol withdrawal. Fun fact, combining other drugs like opioids with benzos can cause withdrawal even while you're still on them. Even without the withdrawal, hallucinations can be a side effect of Xanax, Valium, Vicodin, Adderall, Prozac... all of which I was on.”

Here Ward pauses, and when he speaks again, his words are halting. He tells the story in disjointed fragments, and Danny’s mind races as he tries to connect the pieces. "When I was ...at Birch, he came to me. I couldn't move. He had the knife, the one that... he was going to carve me up, eat me alive. Worse, he was going to eat _Joy_ alive. I couldn't do anything. He was so hungry…” Ward trails off, before rallying to finish the tale in what seems to Danny to be an effort at a light tone that nevertheless falls resigned and weighted.

"It wasn't real, of course. He may have been a murderer, but I'm pretty sure dear old Dad never actually went full cannibal."

Well.

That’s... horrifying.

Danny'd had no idea Ward was hallucinating back then - and "he" is _Harold_? Danny’s pretty sure the instance Ward was talking about had happened _before_ he found out that Harold had killed Danny's parents, before Harold had hit Ward with a golf club or tried to kill Danny (well, again,) before Ward had shot his father off a roof to save Danny's life. Danny can't imagine having those kind of visions about his own father.

...He does have something similar, though.

"It's not really the same thing, but you're not the only one who's seen people that aren't there."

Ward turns to look at Danny. Danny fidgets a little. He finds his gaze dropping to stare more at Ward's chin than his eyes.

"Lei Kung." Ward probably doesn't know who that is. "My master," he elaborates. Then, more subdued: "...Davos's father."

"Ah."

"Yeah. It's not as common now, but when I first came to New York, I used to talk to him... all the time. He was always scolding me, reminding me of my teachings, angry about how I wasn't following the doctrine, that I was letting everyone down by being the worst Iron Fist ever..." Danny’s spirits sink as he remembers it: Lei Kung’s displeased stance, his condemning gaze on the back of Danny’s neck.

"Right. The 'you're a disappointment' voice. It sucks."

Danny curls up tighter. He feels cored open, like someone came along with a melon baller and scraped all his insides out, leaving a ragged mess. He feels like a child seeking comfort. He feels ashamed. His voice is so soft, and he can't make it return to normal volume.

"He said I had to kill Danny Rand. 'Cast away my childish needs, bury my mother and my father, because I belonged to him alone.' Well, to K'un Lun.” He dreads to say the worst part. Why did he start talking about this? Somewhere in the back of his mind is the urge to turn back, not to go down this line of conversation, but the words won’t stop. “And I did,” he confesses. “I was the child of destiny, I had a duty to guard the pass, to be the eternal warrior. I _fought_ for that right, and once I had it, I turned my back on them. I had sworn that I would only be the Iron Fist from then on, but... I wanted to come back, I wanted to see you and Joy and my _home_ , I was so _selfish_..." His voice is cracking. His eyes are burning. This is not how he'd intended for this to go.

"Hey," Ward's voice cuts sharply through the air. " _Hey_ , Danny." Ward's hands find Danny's under the covers, and he clasps them between his own. " _Danny_ , look at me. You did the right thing. Those voices in our heads? They're full of shit. They're fucking assholes, ok? I'm glad you didn't abandon being Danny Rand. That's the best thing about you. Being the Iron Fist doesn't make you special. Any two-bit hack with a karate degree can guard a pass-"

"That is so not true,” Danny counters automatically, indignancy breaking through his gloom. “It was really hard to become the Iron Fist, okay, I had to punch a dragon, and it's a huge honor bestowed to only one-"

"Please, I've seen three different Iron Fists in the last two months, you're not listening to me. _Being the Iron Fist doesn't make you special_. _You_ make you special. You are the kindest, strongest, biggest pain in my ass. You swept in off the street and dragged us all into being better people. You had the company helping millions of people on your _first day_. I mean, it was a dumbass move and you went about it in the worst possible way-"

"Wow, thanks."

"-Shut up; I'm not finished. You are so _good_ , Danny. Not the Iron Fist. _You_. Any dickhead who tries to tell you not to be Danny Rand can go fuck themselves, because Danny Rand is the best person I know."

Danny's eyes are burning again, but for a different reason this time. He has to swallow a few times before he finds his voice.

"...I thought _I_ was supposed to be the one making _you_ feel better."

Ward lets go of Danny's hands to nudge his knuckles against Danny's head.

"Big brother's prerogative."

Danny's heart might burst out of his chest. He feels a huge rush of affection for Ward. Danny promptly clambers on top of him and wraps his arms and legs around Ward like a koala.

"What the-? Get off!" Ward shoves at Danny’s shoulders. Danny just latches on underneath Ward’s arms.

"Nope!" He denies, grinning. "I loooooove you." He rubs his cheek obnoxiously against Ward's chest.

"Oh my god, you're so annoying."

Danny squeezes tighter.

"Little brother's prerogative."

-

When Danny runs through Ward’s assurances from that night, he notices something he hadn’t at the time. The revelation that Ward has a hypercritical voice in his head worries him. Ward hadn't been speaking like it was an ordinary self-recrimination leveller. It’d sounded like he'd meant it similarly to the way Danny'd been speaking: a presence always there, pressing down on you, commenting on your failings at every turn.

Lei Kung's projection had faded for Danny ages ago, after the fall of Hand, growing dimmer and dimmer opposite Danny's rising love of his life in Chinatown, with every completed step in the apartment renovation alongside Colleen, with every person he helped in his (Matt's, _their_ ) city.

Ward has a Voice, and Danny has the impression that it’s as strong as Lei Kung's had ever been. He also has a sinking suspicion whom it might belong to.

"In K'un Lun," Danny starts, when Ward’s been staring into space a bit too long - Danny is more aware of those spells now, and Ward's twisted expression during them feels more ominous - "Every moment was a struggle. Failure wasn't tolerated, you know. And victory only led to the next lesson." He leans faux casually against the dresser next to Ward's chair, keeping a close eye on Ward's reaction.

"Sounds harsh."

"Yeah. They weren't easy on us. Only judgement, never praise... you know how it is.”

Ward snorts. "Yeah, I know."

"Always 'do this, do that, fetch the water, your form is a disgrace....'" Danny prompts, and as he'd feared, Ward picks it up.

"'Buy this, acquire that, make this deal happen by whatever means necessary, you don't need to know why I want that property, be a man, do what Joy says..."

Suspicion confirmed. There’s a hard rock sitting heavily in Danny's stomach. He recalls that horrible day: finding out that Harold had killed his parents, had been the one to set him up with the DEA, having to dodge bullets atop the building his father and Harold had built together, seeing Harold point a gun at Colleen's face and blood leaking through Ward's fingers down his neck to stain the entire top half of his shirt. He also remembers Uncle Harold spoiling them with M&M sundaes, displaying entire packets of Joy's drawings on the fridge, giving Ward a super fancy watch with the acceptance to Wharton. He'd had trouble reconciling those memories: murderer Harold with wonderful father Harold.

Or not so wonderful, it seemed.

"...Your dad was a dick, huh?"

"Yeah. What kind of shit did the monks say to you? Whatever it was, they were wrong."

Trust Ward to still be looking out for Danny. The warm glow it causes in his chest is nice, but it does kind of impede his efforts to figure out how bad the things Harold used to say to Ward might have gotten.

"They weren't about the harsh words as such, not the way it sounds like your dad was. What kind of shit did he say to _you?_ " Danny quirks his lips as he echoes Ward's statement. "Whatever it was, he was wrong."

"Oh, you know, just the normal terrible dad stuff," Ward replies, rolling his eyes. "'You're the biggest disappointment of my life,' lots of stupid 'tests', things like that. The monks really didn't say anything to you? Not even some bullshit about being childish or needing to stop caring about your own life?" he asks, pointedly.

'The biggest disappointment of my life.' Nama Amida Butsu. Help him get through this. Danny wonders how he can go about incorporating 10x more hugging Ward into an average day without arousing Ward's suspicion.

"Lei Kung was a different thing! The rest of the monks never really said much to me, other than some stuff about a xiaoguilao like me never being able to earn the Fist." Jokingly: "They were really lacking in imagination when it came to the insults, you know? I didn't even get any creative put-downs when I failed! They had to resort to boring old beatings."

Ward goes very still. The stone in Danny's stomach turns to ice, and starts sinking.

"Ward?"

Ward stands up. He reaches out, touches both of Danny's arms. Danny searches his face for answers.

"I'm sorry that happened to you, Danny. You're- It shouldn't have happened. Not to you."

This feels like a hugging moment. Danny steps forward so he can wrap his arms around Ward's back. A few seconds later, Danny feels Ward's arms come up to settle around him, too.

They stay like that for awhile.

 

* * *

 

Jakarta goes sideways.

The intention had been to poke around the warehouse, get an idea of what kind of businesses Randall was involved in, and look for any clues as to where he might be based out of or at least somewhere up the food chain they could head next.

Unfortunately, they get caught while Danny’s taking pictures of order forms, and Ward's claim that they have a meeting with the manager to "express our gratitude for lending his expertise in keeping our Kuala Lumpur factory... _unremarkable_ , and to discuss a return on his investment" doesn't land well.

"I'm afraid we're going to have to decline on any future collaborations!" Ward shouts from behind a number of reinforced crates while Danny messes with a forklift across the way. "Your executive summary doesn't match with our client needs and your ROI is atrocious!"

Danny finishes jamming the forklift safety handles and sends it to topple a bunch of shelves and trunks marked "fragile" into the space between the two of them and the group of decidedly unwelcoming employees. It grants them a precious half a minute's clear shot to the exit - until Ward, in one of the stupidest moves Danny has ever seen him make, _detours to grab a small box from the loading dock on their way out_.

" _What the hell are you doing?!_ " Danny shrieks at him as they tumble into a car and screech away. "Oh my god - your _arm!!_ "

"It had your dragon on it, that seemed important, and my arm-" Ward glances down at his torn sleeve and the blood rapidly soaking into it, and pales. "...is going to really hurt once the adrenaline wears off, actually it's starting to hurt now, wow, ok."

Danny presses the pedal down as far as it can go.

-

Really, the bullet graze on Ward's upper arm could have been a lot worse, but Danny still hates it. Ward's attempt to lighten the mood by saying that it’s "only a cut" and "he's had worse" does nothing to stop Danny thinking that as much as Ward’s thrown himself into this journey with Danny, he’s still a non-combatant and this should never have happened. It doesn't help that the first time Danny'd seen Colleen really badly hurt it'd been from a wound on her upper arm too; he knows that was a different situation, that it had only been such a problem because of the poison, but his nerves are jangling all over the place anyway.

Without Shou Lao burning inside him, Danny can feel his chi flow, can shift it within his body, but he can no longer bring it to the surface, can't make it explode outward in an unyielding force, or tangle it with someone else's chi to help reject injury and restore the body. For the most part, he doesn't regret letting that propellant go - he's seen himself do enough damage to know that he has to tame his own fire before he tries working in conjunction with the _dragon's_ \- but at times like this Danny really misses being able to extend his own energy and make everything better.

Danny covers Ward's wound with his hand. He shifts his chi into his palm, _pushes_...

Nothing. His chi remains pooled in his hand, unseen and inert.

 _'Please,'_ Danny thinks. _'Please,_ **_please..._** _'_

He remembers the first time he'd done this, with Colleen. The way her body seemed to light up under his senses, being able to feel so clearly the white rivers of her life force, the black tar of the poison. The way he'd been able to seep his own chi in to envelope both of them, guarding and infusing her energy while he burned out the poison...

He closes his eyes. He pictures Ward's chi pathways, the way he knows they would look: streams connecting throughout the body, pooling at the chakras. He imagines his own chi flowing into Ward's arm, coating the pathways there, bolstering them to fill the missing chunk in his flesh, to repair the way he _knows_ they want to...

"Holy shit," says Ward.

Danny opens his eyes. He thinks he catches the tail end of a glow fading from his hand, but more importantly, the bloody ditch in Ward's arm has been replaced by the shine of pink new skin.

"I didn't think you could do that anymore," Ward says, staring at Danny's, by all appearances, ordinary, fleshy hand.

"I didn't either," Danny replies, before promptly passing out.

-

"You are the worst," Ward says, when Danny wakes - feet piled on what look like four pillows, a damp washcloth on his forehead, and surrounded by Pocari Sweat and sliced oranges. "Never do that again, you absolute bastard. Don't get up!" he snaps, when Danny starts pushing himself off the bed, "You'll probably fall over again, for fuck's sake."

"Then come heeeere," Danny whines, until Ward sits next to him on the bed. He pulls Ward down and hugs him close, shifting off the pillows (his legs have fallen asleep and it’s _awful_ ) to snuggle closer to him. "Thank you for taking care of me."

"Yeah, yeah," Ward grumbles, adjusting his position on the bed - but not, Danny notes smugly, taking any action to remove Danny's arms. Victory. "I was doing myself a favor, really. Do you know how hard it would have been to explain to customs why my brother was in a coma?"

"I just overexerted myself; you're being dramatic."

"Excuse you? _I'm_ being dramatic? Of the two people in this room, which one just swooned like a heroine in a monster movie?"

 

* * *

 

Now that they know Danny can still summon his chi, he spends a lot of time trying to do it - mostly unsuccessfully. No matter how he meditates or how high he raises his chi levels with his forms, his hand remains stubbornly glow-free. He thinks he's made progress lessening the annoying pain of paper cuts, but even that exhausts him and Ward gets all snippy about it.

Nevertheless, Danny’s taken to channeling his chi into his hand at all times - the idea being that the constant energy flow will weaken that barrier later. He’s looking through the stuff they'd gotten from Jakarta; there are a good number of shipments going out to Quezon City, could be worth investigating. The box Ward grabbed had turned out to contain two guns; Danny’s still kind of mad that Ward risked his life for this, Shou Lao doodle on the side of the box or not. He opens that up again to look for an order form or something.

When he picks up one of the guns to put it aside, it and his hand both light up gold.

-

“What?” Danny asks, bewildered and amazed.

"What," Ward says flatly, when Danny shows him his shining hand and gun combo.

-

They test the extent of guns’ ability to act as a catalyst for drawing out Danny's chi. Whether he definitely has to be touching one of the guns, how long he can maintain his chi externally after relinquishing contact with the gun, whether he can hold the gun in one hand and heal or punch someone with the other. Probably the most startling discovery is that if he shoots the gun while charging it with his chi, the bullets will be charged as well - and that extra chi force adds an explosive impact. He can also shoot _just his chi_ as _bullets_ , which is _beyond_ cool - but it seems like a smart backup plan to keep buying real bullets too.

In theory, the fact that the guns can do this might have something to do with the little etchings of Shou Lao's mark at the base of the handles.

In practice, Danny has to learn how to shoot.

-

"Okay, reload and try again."

They’ve set up a makeshift shooting range in a clearing in the wood off the coast of North Kalimantan - isolated enough not to alarm anyone but close enough to civilization that they can still make a hasty exit if they need to. Ward gives Danny a long lecture on gun safety and makes him recite it back three times before so much as showing him how to stand.

"When did you learn how to do this, anyway?” Danny asks as he carefully ejects the magazine. “I didn't think Midtown was that harsh."

"First of all, never underestimate high upper class culture. The amount of smarmy teenagers bragging about hunting trips in my private equity asset class was so unbearable I actually did my cases remotely."

"Really?"

"Well, and it coincided with fin-tech,” Ward admits, flashing a grin. “But really what happened is Joy put her foot down after I'd been mugged the third time and made me apply for my concealed carry."

"You were mugged?!"

"You'll find one of the downsides of being rich is that people tend to assume you have money,” he says, drily. “Well, maybe not _you_." He sweeps his eyes down Danny's dirt-caked outfit as if his own clothes aren't equally worn. Danny rolls his eyes.

"Still though, that many times?"

Ward hesitates a few beats too long. "No,” he finally replies. “Now come on, that stand's not going to shoot itself."

 

* * *

 

It rains _so much_ in Sapporo. Danny's leg is throbbing with the inclement weather, and the persistent pain has his anger, usually carefully tamped down, straining at its leash.

"I wonder how Walker's doing," he says, because it’s something to say that isn't raging against the pins in his knee. "She had trouble with rain."

"Ugh," Ward drops his head onto the café table, narrowly missing the huge bag of Shiroi Koibito cookies Danny'd bought for their snack supply. "Please don't talk about Walker."

"Would you rather I talk about how much I hate this freaking _rain_?" Danny snaps. Oops. Ward lifts his head to look at Danny worriedly. Danny takes a deep breath. Blow out the anger. Let it dissipate in the wind. "Sorry. Just, my knee."

"Gotcha. If it's any consolation, it does get better. My arm's been bothering me too, but not nearly as much as it used to." Danny shoots a troubled look to Ward's chi-healed bullet wound, but Ward gestures with his opposite arm. "Pretty bad spiral fracture a while back. Screws and everything."

"Ouch. What happened?"

Ward opens his mouth to answer, but then he closes it again. Eats one of the cookies.

"Dad," he says.

"Oh."

"It's not a big deal."

"It's kind of a big deal."

"I guess it is. But it's over now."

"It's still affecting you."

A shrug.

"It made me who I am." Danny remembers saying that to Joy when he was describing his treatment at K'un Lun. He thinks he understands her distressed frown better now. Ward nudges his good leg under the table. "Come on, I'll buy you another parfait."

"Uh, who owns the majority of the company, here?” Danny relaxes as he falls into the banter. “ _I'll_ buy us more parfaits."

"I can not believe you're pulling the 51% card right now. Fine, brat. Get more cookies, too."

"I will! And some of that white hot chocolate mix, because those were really good."

-

Danny'd figured the hot chocolate would be helpful at night, if the rain continued. It works out even better than predicted, because when Ward gasps up that night, clutching at his arm, Danny’s already boiling water in the little suite kitchen. Ward squints at him.

"Danny?"

"Leg was bothering me. Want some hot chocolate?"

"...Sure, why not."

They sip their drinks shoulder to shoulder at the little kitchen counter. Ward doodles a dragon with chocolate stains around its mouth, because he's been slowly gifting Danny a collection of dragons looking ridiculous. Danny folds a paper napkin into a boat.

"You know a lot of those."

"What?"

Ward nods at the boat.

"I see them on Megan's desk. She keeps every one you give her, you know."

"Really? That's nice."

"Mmm hm. Your heart-breaker ways have infected even the top levels of my company, Rand." Danny’s face drops into an exasperated expression.

"Are you still on about that? It's called being friendly."

"Tell that to all the besotted people scattered across Asia,” Ward teases him. “I think that last jogger was ready to propose on the spot."

"Was not!"

"Oh, _Danny,_ " Ward puts on an over-dramatic, infatuated voice. He leans heavily on Danny, fanning himself with his far hand. " _Danny,_ you're so brave, please tell me more about how you fought a dragon. _Danny_ , you're _so_ chivalrous, helping me carry my groceries like this, Oh, Danny, you're so _talented_ with all this _complicated_ paper folding, won't you come up to my apartment and show me what else you can fold-"

"Stop!" Danny laughs, pushing Ward off of him - and then switching to sling his arm over Ward's shoulders instead. "...It's not actually that complicated."

"Your flirting technique? You're right, it's surprisingly simple-"

"It's not flirting! And no, I meant the zhézhǐ. It's not that hard. You wanna learn?"

"What the hell. Teach me to make a boat, Romeo."

-

They pick up a pack of origami paper at a stationary store so they aren't pilfering too many sheets from Ward's sketchbook. Danny teaches Ward all the zhézhǐ he knows, and then they set to learning origami together. Zhézhǐ, he explains, focuses a lot more on practical shapes, like boxes and balloons, or other inanimate objects, while origami is more decorative.

("I like it, though. That it's all things like animals and plants. Things that are alive.")

The repetitive nature of folding the paper combined with the focusing aspect of having to remember which step comes next has a soothing effect. Increasingly, when one of them wakes from a nightmare, he sits up and folds a few shapes to relax his nerves before either going back to sleep or getting an early start on the day. When both of them are up, either roused by the other moving around or just unlucky enough to have both had bad nights, they sit side by side, folding and talking.

Danny recounts most of the bad dreams keeping him up pretty readily. (He tells Ward that he and Colleen often shared both their dreams and their nightmares with each other; Ward calls them disgustingly perfect.) The plane crash recurs often, as well as variations on Danny being too slow or too weak to stop the Hand from killing the people he loves. Every now and then he's hesitant to tell Ward what he's seen, but on those nights Ward usually eyes the way he’s hunched in on himself, picking at the paper and bending its corners more than doing any folding, and probes for answers until Danny relents. He’ll lean over to bury his face in Ward's shoulder and hug Ward around the torso, and quietly admit that Harold had killed Ward before Danny reached the top of the office, or in the penthouse right in front of Danny before Danny could anticipate it, or he tricked Danny into helping him do it while Danny was too busy naively trusting Harold to realize what was actually happening.

Ward's sharing moments are far more rare and succinct, and Danny holds Ward's trust at those times close to his chest like the precious gift that it is.

"He would fly into these rages," Ward ventures once, watching Danny warily for his reaction. "I never knew what might set him off. It was... nerve wracking. All the time."

Danny goes up on his knees so he can hug Ward tightly from the higher position for once. He presses Ward's face into his chest and rests his head on top of Ward's and envelopes him in his arms.

"I'm glad he's dead," Danny declares into Ward's hair. "I'm so, so glad."

"...Yeah," Ward replies, hugging back. "Me too."

 

* * *

 

Their paper art collections are becoming more and more elaborate. Ward adds detail to their creations with his pens, and Danny has a knack for adjusting the pattern on the fly to customize the shapes, which Ward insists is more impressive than Danny thinks it is. They’ve taken to setting up entire miniature scenes on the dressers and taking pictures before recycling those and starting anew.

Danny is twisting some white paper dogs into various stages of leaps while Ward carefully inks in spot patterns: they’re working on a scene of puppies fleeing Cruella de Vil, because Ward can be kind of dark sometimes.

"I tried to run a few times," Ward announces. Danny pauses, mid paw-bend. "A lot of times," he amends. "I would pack my bags, buy plane tickets, and drive to Joy's. I would sit in the car and try to figure out how I was going to tell her we had to leave." Ward puts his pen down and looks at Danny defiantly. Danny waits for Ward to continue. His patience seems to agitate Ward. "I didn't do it," he adds, somehow sounding like he’s going on the offensive. "I could have, and I didn't. I turned around and I went back home." He’s still glaring at Danny with his jaw clenched, like he’s braced for impact. Danny isn't sure why.

"That makes sense," he says, carefully. "It was your life." Ward's jaw works a few times.

"I should have done it."

"Maybe," Danny concedes. Ward draws in a sharp breath. "Because it might have saved you some pain, and I don't want you to be hurt. But it's ok that you didn't."

Ward looks lost. Danny thinks this seems like another hugging moment.

 

* * *

 

_'No! Let me go, please, please just let me go!'_

Danny sits straight up, gasping for air. He nearly trips in his haste to stand. He can't be lying down right now. He paces frantically, flinging his limbs every which way to prove that he can. His sight narrows in on the little cluster of paper rabbits, building a warren in the roots of a 3D origami tree. Shijiazhuang. He’s in Shijiazhuang. Ward's sketchbook is lying on the counter next to the mugs they'd left to dry. His new coat is draped over the back of one of stools. The desk lamp next to Ward's bed is on-

"Danny?" Ward walks over. He places his hands on Danny's arms to calm his erratic jerks. "Hey. What's going on?"

Danny still feels like he might vibrate out of his skin. He focuses hard on the window behind Ward’s head, trying to calm down. "Nothing. Nightmare. Sorry."

Ward pauses. He’s probably thinking that Danny is usually more forthcoming than this.

"...Do you wanna talk about it?" A ghost of a smile traces Ward's lips. They've come pretty far.

"I... It's dumb, it's-"

"Seems to me like it's more serious than usual, actually."

"It's not real." Ward just looks at him. Danny sighs. "I was with the others from that whole thing when we took down the Hand. Luke and Jessica. ...Matt. We were working together on something, I don't know, but then something happened and they were looking at me suspiciously. They didn't trust me anymore. I tried to leave but they wouldn't let me.” He starts speaking faster as he gets more agitated. “Luke and Jessica are so strong, you know, and Matt could do this thing where he could just flick his wrist and have a metal cord around you, and they tied me to a slab and then you and Joy were there, and you were agreeing that it was for the best, and I tried to reason with you, but no matter how loud I yelled you were acting like you couldn't _hear_ me,” Danny’s voice cracks minutely as his tempo accelerates even further. “I was strapped down on that hospital bed and the two of you were looking in this small window in the door at me, and you were saying to each other that it was for my own good, because I was just some crazy person, and I was trying to tell you all that I wasn't crazy, that it was really me, but _nobody was listening..._ "

Ward is silent. His grip has tightened on Danny's arms.

"I'm sorry," he says. Danny blinks at him, shocked out of his remembered panic at the unexpected response.

"It wasn't real,” he says, still unsteady. “It was a dream."

"It _was_ real, though. We... _I_ , did that to you. I had you committed. I called you dangerous."

"That wasn't your fault." Ward gives him a sardonic look. "Ok, but you were just trying to protect you and Joy. You didn't know it was me."

"...Didn't I, though?" Danny looks sharply at Ward. Ward lets go of Danny's arms. His fists clench and unclench at his sides. "I tell myself that I thought you were just some impostor looking to prey on our grief about our dead friend, to steal and ruin everything we'd worked so hard to build, but... the way you looked, the things you _said_... I knew. Deep down, I knew. And I still..."

Danny takes a deep breath. That’s... a lot. But they’re _here_ , _together_ , in China, with business lectures and self-defense lessons and an album of paper craft landscapes on Danny's phone, and he doesn't _care_ , anymore, that Ward tried to have him killed. He isn't going to do it again. He’ll probably try to fight anyone else who does, even though Danny is a master of Kung Fu and Ward mostly just knows how to disarm someone with a knife.

"It's ok."

"It's not."

"I forgive you."

"You shouldn't."

"Well, I do. You're my brother. You're a good person."

"I'm not," Ward insists.

"You are."

"I'm _not,_ Danny.” Ward spins away to pace halfway across the room. His shoulders are high, and his finger flexing increasingly frantic.  “There's things you don't know,” he says, his voice strained. “Things I've done. They're not good things. They're... really, _really_ not good things."

"I don't care. That's not who you are."

" _Isn't it?!_ " Ward is nearly hysterical. "I did them! _Me!_ I did it! No one forced me. I could have said no. I could have just ran. Instead, I-” His breathing picks up. “I got my hands dirty, I-"

Danny practically throws himself at Ward. He squeezes his hands together behind Ward's back and clenches them tightly.

"I don't _care_ ," he emphasizes. "You're my brother, and you wouldn't do it now, whatever it is, and you were talking about saying no which makes me think you were being ordered to do it anyway-"

"Not all of it," Ward protests weakly. Danny just squeezes harder.

"-and I believe in you. I love you, and I know you're a good person, and I don't need to know what you did to know that I forgive you for it. So there."

They’re silent for a bit. Then Ward starts laughing.

"I thought _I_ was the one who was supposed to be comforting _you_ ," he says. Danny grins.

 

* * *

 

They’re at the Jokhang Temple, waiting for a tour group to clear out of the best spot for a picture of the Potala Palace. Danny takes a photo of a sign explaining how the temple was built on the "devil's heart" because... well, because.

He becomes aware of a group of children huddled nearby, alternating between staring at him and Ward and giggling amongst themselves. He focuses in on their conversation. Ah, of course. Seeing foreigners is a novelty to them.

One of them makes a comment about his hair, illustrated by a floofy gesture above their head, to a chorus of giggles. “It just grows like that,” he tells them, amused. Their eyes go wide; they clearly hadn't expected him to understand anything they were saying. "Do you want to see?" He kneels down to present the top of his head to them. "It's ok, I promise."

One of the kids reaches out hesitantly to pat his hair. When it bounces, the kid gasps, and presses it again. The others join in, emboldened by their friend's success. They keep petting him and giggling until a horrified adult rushes over to pull them away and apologize profusely.

"What was that?" Ward asks, amused, after Danny’s finished assuring her that he doesn't mind in the least.

"They thought we looked funny," Danny explains. Ward just looks at him for a few seconds; it seems to take him a beat to realize why two tall white guys might be an amusing sight to a bunch of small Tibetan children. "It was no big deal."

"It was adorable, is what it was. You looked like a dog." Danny woofs and growls at Ward, leaning over into his face while Ward bends away. "Oh my god, stop, what are you- _eurgh!_ " he exclaims when Danny licks his cheek. "That is so disgusting, this is a place of _worship_ , what kind of horrible Buddhist _are_ you?!"

“I’m just fulfilling my duty as an adorable and loving canine companion. Puppy kisses!” Danny wags his tongue at Ward, who plants his hand on Danny’s chest and fully extends his arm to hold Danny at bay.

“The _kids_ are adorable,” he emphasizes, scrubbing at his face with his other hand while Danny laughs. “ _You_ are a grown man acting like a dog.”

“Love meeeeee,” Danny whines in reply, curling his fingers in and pretending to paw at Ward while Ward bats his hands away.

“Go back to playing with the children; that’s your actual age group!”

-

It was a great day, so the last thing Danny expects when he goes to sleep that night is to be awakened a few hours later by a loud clattering from the hotel suite kitchenette.

Ward is standing over the sink with the faucet running. He's dropped a cup in the sink; luckily the hotel-provided cups, while made to look similar to glasses, are actually made of a sturdy plastic so they won't break easily. He fishes it out, fills it with water, pours it out, hesitates, then fills it again. He turns off the faucet and sets the cup of water on the counter, where he proceeds to stare at it.

Danny hesitates. It feels like there’s something very big, here - something that he can't quite see the edges of. He pads over and leans against the counter next to Ward. The huge thing weighing down the air warns him against breaking the silence, but he can at least be here. He can show Ward that he’s here.

Ward’s hands grip the edge of the counter, and his arms are locked. He’s still staring at the cup of water. Danny’s pretty anxious about that. There’s been an unspoken agreement from the start that the first thing Danny does whenever they enter their accommodations in a new place, while Ward focuses on unpacking, is to make sure the hotel had followed through on their request to remove the minibar and to get rid of anything he does find hanging around.

The moment feels so tense that it’s actually jarring when Ward breaks the silence.

"I'm not my father," he says.

Danny's breath freezes in his chest. He has the distinct impression that whatever happens next is very, very important.

"Of course you're not," he replies, cautiously. This entire situation feels extremely precarious.

"I would never hurt a kid."

What the fuck. What the _fuck_. Had Harold been hurting Ward even when they were children? Even before the Hand, and his parents... back when they were still blowing bubbles and getting piggy back rides? Every time Danny thinks he has a handle on just how terrible Harold had actually been, Ward says something else to prove him wrong. _Fuck._ All that time, and Danny hadn't had a clue...

Danny had shoved most of his more unpleasant childhood memories of Ward onto some dusty shelf in the back of his mind. After all, there’s no point in dwelling on how Ward used to terrorize him when they’re both different people _now_ , and Danny’s always preferred to focus on the positive parts of any given situation anyway. Memories of Ward letting Danny and Joy paint his toenails or crawl into bed with him at sleepovers are far nicer than remembering how terrified he’d been every time Ward had locked him in the cafeteria freezer, how Danny couldn't help thinking that _this_ time something would happen and Ward wouldn't be able to let him out in a minute. Those memories come back to him now, and the benefit of hindsight puts an entirely new spin on the vitriol Ward used to sneer at him - taunts about being a baby, needing mommy and daddy to fawn all over him, how sickening it was that Danny's parents were sure to give him lots of hugs and kisses...

Danny swallows hard.

"I know you wouldn't," he says. Ward's knuckles are white against the edge of the counter top. His arms are trembling minutely.

"I wouldn't hurt _any_ kid. But especially not... _Especially_ not _my_ kid. No matter what. I wouldn't- I _won't_. I never will."

"Of course you won't. Ward. You're going to be the best father. When you eventually have a kid-" Ward cuts him off with a sharp, brittle laugh.

" _'When,'_ " he echoes, finally dropping his gaze away from the water to bow his head. "I already do."

Danny stares at him.

Ward looks up. He gives a resigned half-smile at Danny's dumbfounded expression.

"You met her once. You were kind of out of it, though, so you might not remember."

"A daughter?"

"The mother. Bethany. Kid's not born yet. I don't know what it'll be. I don't know if I _will_ know. She doesn't want me in its life."

Danny feels a wash of anger at this Bethany. How could she not- couldn't she _see-_?

Ward catches his expression and frowns.

"Don't look like that. I'm not explaining it right. It's not about me. She has her own reasons."

Danny’s still scowling. Ward pokes him in the ribs.

"No being mad at Bethany," he orders. "I'm serious." Danny huffs, but relents.

"Well, you're going to be a great father,” he says, belligerent. “That kid is going to love you. And me. I'm claiming the title of coolest uncle right now, ok? No one else can have it." Ward seems a little stunned. "I'm going to spoil them rotten,” he continues, letting the aggressive notes in his voice fade to something more encouraging. “They'll come back from babysitting with Uncle Danny completely high on sugar and back flip kicking all your vases, and you'll swear you're never letting me watch them again but then they'll look at you with those little kid eyes and you'll give in because you can never say no to them, because you'll be the most ridiculous, shmoopy, doting father in existence."

Ward just stares helplessly at him for a beat. "That's a lot of confidence in a lot of hypotheticals."

Danny pushes as much enthusiasm as he can into his response. "Hypothetical, nothing! They'll come around. I know it."

Sarcastically: "Oh, you _know_ it."

"Yes! Didn't I tell you? Seeing the future is one of my dragon-granted powers.” Ward rolls his eyes, but the tension seems to be leaking out of him with Danny’s antics. “How do you think I knew which day filling your office with flowers would spark the most gossip? Keeping you on your toes isn't easy."

Ward smiles despite himself as he shoves Danny lightly. The cup of water is forgotten.

 

* * *

 

Danny stares up at the mountain. The man calling himself Orson Randall has finally agreed to meet with them - at the base village of the mountain where hides the entrance to K'un Lun. After everything, he’s back where he'd began.

"I came here with Colleen.” He feels weirdly disconnected from the story as he tells it. “It took us ages to reach the pass. When we finally got there, it was just... blood. Enemy bodies. K'un Lun was gone. I'm still not sure if the gate just closed or..."

Ward puts his hand on Danny’s shoulder. "They had a whole army of people who could fight like you, right? They're probably ok."

"I hope so."

"Do you want to climb up?"

"No."

 

* * *

 

The plane ride home is a lot longer than any of their short hops around Asia over the last few months. It isn't as harrowing as it'd been on the way over, though. Nor as much as when he'd made the trip with Colleen and Claire, or even when he was with Colleen the second time - though they had both been pretty shaken by recent events on that trip, so that isn't too surprising. Ward keeps prodding him about origami folds, or quizzing him on different business functions and how their interconnections could affect the whole company. He lets Danny clutch at his side and bury his face in his shirt, like watching scary movies when they were kids.

He doesn't think they’re expecting to meet anyone when they disembark, so Danny is surprised to find a welcoming committee on the tarmac.

"Hey there, jet set," greets Claire. "You good?"

"Of course he's good," Colleen counters, though not before a quick inspection. "He's the strongest person I know."

"I'm standing right here." Luke probably means that to be mock-offended, but it’s Luke, so he just sounds cool. "And I don't know why we were worried about Danny. He punched a dragon, you know."

"The Immortal Iron Fist," agrees Claire.

"Protector of K'un Lun."

"Sworn enemy of the Hand," Colleen chimes in. She’s wearing her katana again. Her sleeves are pushed up, displaying the winding dragon tattoo proudly. She looks great.

Danny's thought processes seem to have stalled out. He’s overcome, seeing all of them waiting there. How did they even know this was when he and Ward would be returning? _He_ hadn't told them.

"So, you two are on good terms again?" he asks Claire and Luke, dumbly.

"Oh yeah, Colleen knocked some sense into him."

"Literally," Misty adds gleefully. "She kicked his ass." She and Colleen exchange bright grins. Luke ignores them.

"Welcome home, rich boy. Come on, family dinner, on us."

Out of the corner of his eye, Danny spots Ward slinking unobtrusively away with their bags. Before he can say anything, Colleen calls out:

"Hey, dumbass! He said ' _family_ dinner'. That means you, too."

Ward looks like you could knock him over with a feather. Danny might burst with happiness. He winds his arm around Ward's and drags him over to the rest of the group. The others are already arguing about dinner.

"So where do you want to go? There's a new pho place on Grand."

"They've been gallivanting across Asia for months; they don't want more Asian food! Let's do Italian."

"There's always Cuban."

"Uh, no, I don't want to be at the restaurant when I'm not working and my mom will never let me hear the end of it if we go anywhere else."

Danny beams. He’s so jubilant he can feel himself bouncing on the balls of his feet. Ward's arm, which is still linked in his elbow, bounces with him.

“What do you think?” he directs to Ward, who’s watching the assembled group warily. Ward looks at Danny, and something in his stance seems to loosen.

“Your choice, monk boy,” he says. Danny sweeps his gaze over the lot of them: his family, all standing there together.

"How about American?" he asks. "It'll be good to have a taste of home."

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of the little details and such in this fic came from discussions on tumblr and discord and convos in other fic comments and the like. The inclusion of Ward's sketchbook especially comes straight from [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio)'s [Danny and Ward's Asia Road Trip series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1232444).


End file.
